[address-policy-wg] 2013-05 New Policy Proposal (No Restrictions on End User Assignments in Intra-RIR Transfers)

Hi,

On 17/08/2013 00:32, Tore Anderson wrote:
> If an LIR wants to get out of the internet registry business and sell
> off its allocations, it can always just purge them of assignments first
> (even with your requirement in place).

It looks to me that to break contracts with End-Users could be much more
difficult for a LIR than just reselling these contracts to another LIR
which would be forced to continue executing these contracts (maybe this
is not true everywhere in the Ripe regions however).

So this probably actually makes a difference, and good point for David,
kind of a "protection" to the end users.

Now, the question is, did the End Users conclude a contract with their
LIR, that forbids him to resell this contract to another provider ? If
yes, then the protections stands in the contrat.

If not, should the Ripe policy (that does not require the End Users to
agree) take care of such aspects of the relation between LIR and End User ?

I don't think so, because this matter really seems (to me) to out exceed
a Ripes' policy scope, for many reasons. The first of these reasons may be
that End Users may have very different relations to their LIRs, and that
the Ripe policy is not tying End Users, but only LIRs and Ripe.

Another reason may be that we are not really sure that it would be a real
protection for End Users to stop theyr LIR from transfering to another LIR.
This could avoid them to have to renumber, by example.

On the other hand it could be a company buying the IP space to stifle
another concurrent company. But shouldn't courts be handling this actually ?

So is such a limitation a real protection for End Users, or a dangerous
rigidity that could avoid End Users to continue their activity ?

Probably this is a too much complicated subject for Ripe policies to take
part in a relation that is out of scope and involves a third party.